1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to wireless digital communication systems and, more specifically, to a system and method for integrated metrology within a femtocell access point.
2. Description of the Related Art
Increasing subscribership on cellular networks is constantly driving utilization of available bandwidth within a typical cell coverage region for individual cellular access points. Increasing utilization ultimately leads to poor overall cellular wireless performance and reliability. One strategy for accommodating overall increases in wireless utilization is to continually shrink the coverage region of each cellular access point, thereby maintaining a modest utilization for each cellular access point and consistent reliability overall. For this strategy to work, cellular access points need to be deployed in densities corresponding to local subscribership densities. Furthermore, each cell coverage region should not overlap extensively with more than a small number of other cell coverage regions.
In certain settings, the strategy of deploying cellular access points having small coverage regions is practical. For example, this strategy may be efficiently deployed in areas of consistently dense subscribership and readily available spaces to install cellular access points. However, in other settings this approach becomes very challenging, such as in areas having a mix of high and low subscribership density. For example, a town may have a mix of dense apartments and industrial buildings, as well as large open spaces. A cellular access point with a sufficiently large coverage region to cover the large open spaces would easily be saturated by a few nearby densely populated buildings. However, providing coverage in the large open spaces may also be problematic using small coverage regions without appropriate facility space to install a large number of cellular access points. Equally problematic is providing cellular coverage in extremely sparsely populated locations, such as rural homes and farms.
As the foregoing illustrates, what is needed in the art is a more efficient and economical system and method for providing cellular wireless coverage.